The Face of Harry

22 Dec 2024

The Face of Harry A photograph onthe  flier for WCT’s recent production ‘What They Left Behind’ is of Harry Crowther, a WW1 survivor and the grandfather of one of the actors, Clare Small. Clare plays the part of Bessie Angell whose four eldest sons went off to fight in the First World War. Through a strange symbiosis, two Harrys unknown to each other in 1916, meet in the making of community theatre performed by local people attempting to reflect on the lives of people living in Wimborne at that time. Clare Small writes:

‘The face that looks out at you across a century is that of Harry Crowther. Harry was my Granddad. At the start of W.W.1. he was already in the army having joined, as a boy soldier at the age of sixteen, in 1912. Within days of embarkation Harry found himself camped with his regiment in the beautiful countryside near Ypres. In those early days mechanization and mud-filled trenches were yet to come. Harry, a foot soldier, went into battle alongside of sabre-drawn horsemen charging through cornfields and woodland. The fighting was fierce and positions maintained at a great cost but eventually some were overrun. Harry was taken as a prisoner of war along with hundreds of others. They were marched away past the heaped bodies of hundreds of fallen German soldiers, discovering only then the might of their enemy. So ended The First Battle of Ypres. Harry was lucky that day because as a prisoner he survived the war. When he was repatriated home in 1919 he weighed just over seven stone (43kg). ‘What They Left Behind’ touches on the story of another Harry, Harry Angell from Hillbuts, (near modern day QE school) in Wimborne, his Mum and Dad, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours, elders and betters. The people of Wimborne, one hundred years ago.’